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This is not that simple, in France and I'm sure lot of places, we
have THE "Administration" The big scleroser. > You've got it. The US thinks it is "there", and this is the most > disastrous attitude to have, either at the level of a country (or a > programming language). > > Cheers, For the TV reference this may be indeed a problem. Now we also get students (19 or 20 years old) that are only consumers and do not know how to take patience to do something, or even concentrate more than 2 mins. May be this is related to TV. |
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>>>>> "stéphane" == stéphane ducasse <[hidden email]> writes:
stéphane> For the TV reference this may be indeed a problem. Now we also get stéphane> students (19 or 20 years old) that are only consumers and do not stéphane> know how to take patience to do something, or even concentrate more stéphane> than 2 mins. May be this is related to TV. And the routine use of psychoactive drugs at all levels of life (including kids) to handle what should be handled by conversation, because "therapy" is such a scornful activity here, but getting a "drug" to fix it is completely guilt-free. -- Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095 <[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/> Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc. See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training! |
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In reply to this post by stéphane ducasse-2
I could toss in the old adage that "The US is the only country to
leap from barbarism to decadence without going through civilisation" (and note that the spelling checker wants me to join in that barbarity by spelling 'civilisation' with a $z) but instead I'll point to an interesting blog entry that gives a different perspective on the joys of Python, not to mention Ruby and by reflection, on Squeak. http://www.cabochon.com/~stevey/blog-rants/anti-anti-hype.html tim PS and note hoe my random number sigline picker manages an extraordinarily apropos comment, yet again. -- tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim "How many Pak Protectors does it take to change a lightbulb?" "Only one, but the lightbulb has to smell right." |
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In reply to this post by Alan Kay
Really? Eventually children suffering from anemia will die. Those day,
each 5 second a kid (bellow 10) die because of mal-nutrition. Since the begining of this thread more than 34000 kids die for such reason, I can't agree the effect is the same. I just really feel unconfortable about plan, in the name of kids in developing countries, related to spend resources just to re-develop existing stuff. You know that Smalltalk and its environment are far superior to Python, so I cannot understand you stand "kid first" and at the same time your position about spending resources re-developping a graphical environment with an inferior vehicule. It is just non-sense. It will make more sense to re-developped more advanced language&environment on top of Smalltalk/Squeak. Was it not your initial plan? As said Garrison Keillor: "I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it." Hilaire Alan Kay a écrit : > We have television instead of anemia, but it has a similar effect ... > > Cheers, > > Alan > > ------------- > > At 07:06 AM 4/22/2006, Hilaire Fernandes wrote: > >> Alan Kay a écrit : >> > Yes, if only the world -- especially computer people -- were even >> > halfway rational and interesting in learning ... but this is one of the >> > main goals of education (= enlightenment, etc.), and this is why global >> > education for everyone has been my main interest over the years. >> > >> > As Seymour once said, "I wish the US was still a developing country!"). >> > We could say that about Europe also.... >> >> Hum, not sure to understand. In developping country, one related problem >> to education is to avoid children suffer from anemia, which make them >> unable to concentrate on anything. >> >> Hilaire > > > > > |
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In reply to this post by Alan Kay
Moving sideways in this discussion - as long as mentoring is more
important than content, the number of kids that can be "infected" at any given time is bounded by the number of people able to do the mentoring. I expect mentors are even rarer than computers where the 100$ laptop is headed. Haven't there been any serious attempts to make systems in which the content itself takes the user on a reasonably long and useful ride even with no mentoring? I had about 3 years of fun with Basic and about 500 pages of exercise booklets, and nothing more. I think two important elements to that success were that the Commodore64 had zero extraneous interface, and that the booklets started from explaining the keyboard. Why can't the booklet be part of the environment, and improved until mentors can be banned from the room with no/little ill results? Daniel Alan Kay wrote: > I agree that content is really important, and even more so is > mentoring. The language is less so providing it doesn't develop > limited ideas (like BASIC did). |
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In reply to this post by timrowledge
Hey Tim --
My teachers didn't even have opposable thumbs ... but ... Cheers, Alan --------- At 08:19 AM 4/22/2006, tim Rowledge wrote: >I could toss in the old adage that "The US is the only country to >leap from barbarism to decadence without going through >civilisation" (and note that the spelling checker wants me to join in >that barbarity by spelling 'civilisation' with a $z) but instead >I'll point to an interesting blog entry that gives a different >perspective on the joys of Python, not to mention Ruby and by >reflection, on Squeak. > >http://www.cabochon.com/~stevey/blog-rants/anti-anti-hype.html > >tim >PS and note hoe my random number sigline picker manages an >extraordinarily apropos comment, yet again. >-- >tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim >"How many Pak Protectors does it take to change a lightbulb?" "Only >one, but the lightbulb has to smell right." > > |
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In reply to this post by Daniel Vainsencher-3
Hi Daniel --
At 10:02 AM 4/22/2006, Daniel Vainsencher wrote: >Moving sideways in this discussion - as long as mentoring is more >important than content ... I'd say that if you have good content, the gating factor for success is definitely that quality of the mentoring for most children. >, the number of kids that can be "infected" at any given time is bounded >by the number of people able to do the mentoring. I expect mentors are >even rarer than computers where the 100$ laptop is headed. Yep, even in US, Europe, Japan, and generally worse in 3rd world. >Haven't there been any serious attempts to make systems in which the >content itself takes the user on a reasonably long and useful ride even >with no mentoring? Yes, and it works for some children, especially the 5% who are wired enough to "almost be there" and for those who have learned how to learn via reading (I was one of those). A very large number of children don't read well enough or have enough interest to follow directions. Most also have very few options when they get stuck. For most children, mentoring of some kind (including from the system if it can) is the bridge over the gaps. What Jerry Bruner called "scaffolding" is a little different from child to child, but it is key. >I had about 3 years of fun with Basic and about 500 pages of exercise >booklets, and nothing more. I think two important elements to that success >were that the Commodore64 had zero extraneous interface, and that the >booklets started from explaining the keyboard. And, most likely, that you were in that 5%! Adele and I realized early on that the real key was to find out what to do for the next 85%, and this is where actual pedagogy and educational environments (and mentoring) really matter. >Why can't the booklet be part of the environment, and improved until >mentors can be banned from the room with no/little ill results? Check out the idea of "Active Essays" that Ted Kaehler and I starting doing about 12 years ago. These bridge some of the gap for readers. But are not very useful for non-readers. The UI is part of the mentoring environment (this is why I got interested in naive relatively easy to use and explorable UIs in the 70s -- they were initially for children). If you don't have much of an AI behind the scenes, then a really great UNDO makes a huge difference. I think that was one of the main PARC contributions to UIs. (Squeak does not have a great UNDO ...). But, aside from having huge mechanisms that can anticipate and deal with user errors in a graceful way (c.f. Anderson's work at CMU with tutors of various kinds), not much general mechanism exists. I have thought several times about getting Anderson to do a massively gentle tutor for just the first 30 minutes of the Etoys experience (and I still think this would be a good idea for the $100 laptop). Among other things, the Nebraska facilities in Squeak Etoys (and the more comprehensive collab facilities in Croquet) are there partly for the purpose of allowing children who have some experience somewhere in the world to help children with less experience in other parts of the world. In McLuhan's global village, this is the analogy to the one room schoolhouse. Both Seymour and we have experimented with this over the years and are convinced that it is a part of the solution of the puzzle. Cheers, Alan >Daniel > >Alan Kay wrote: >>I agree that content is really important, and even more so is mentoring. >>The language is less so providing it doesn't develop limited ideas (like >>BASIC did). > |
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In reply to this post by Daniel Vainsencher-3
Hi Daniel,
Am 22.04.2006 um 19:02 schrieb Daniel Vainsencher: > Moving sideways in this discussion - as long as mentoring is more > important than content, the number of kids that can be "infected" > at any given time is bounded by the number of people able to do the > mentoring. I expect mentors are even rarer than computers where the > 100$ laptop is headed. > > Haven't there been any serious attempts to make systems in which > the content itself takes the user on a reasonably long and useful > ride even with no mentoring? > > I had about 3 years of fun with Basic and about 500 pages of > exercise booklets, and nothing more. I think two important elements > to that success were that the Commodore64 had zero extraneous > interface, and that the booklets started from explaining the keyboard. > > Why can't the booklet be part of the environment, and improved > until mentors can be banned from the room with no/little ill results? > From the pedagogical point of view the interaction with a human mentor is essential. On the other side, there is so much to learn, that it could not be done all be a mentor. The solution to this problem lies in the fact, that learning is a long going process. Basic knowlegde - basic experience - basic ideas teached by a human AND good didactics gives the foundation later the learn the rest of the universe from text, computers, machines. In other words: both is needed: stuff for human mentors, and stuff for creating machine learning. I think the field Alan Kay is working is the field where humans are needed: the beginning of learning at all. Regards Hans > Daniel > > Alan Kay wrote: >> I agree that content is really important, and even more so is >> mentoring. The language is less so providing it doesn't develop >> limited ideas (like BASIC did). > > |
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In reply to this post by Hilaire Fernandes-5
Hi --
I would gently suggest you are missing the points here. You wrote at the end: >As said Garrison Keillor: >"I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it." I'm sure the irony was unintended. The reality is that we need to use every possible route to try to get content of a high level and learnability to children everywhere. If most of the computer world does not like to use Smalltalk (this seems to be reality) we shouldn't pout and stamp our feet about it, but try to make examples that will help lift people's perception of what is possible. If the Python folks want "Programming for everyone" and we can get them to see that there are some important things that need to be done to make the experience what it should be for children, then we should help them. Sure, I'd love to see them understand more about Smalltalk, but it is the psychology of that culture (and large parts of the Smalltalk culture, and most programming cultures) for computer folks to want to come up with their own ideas and solutions. E.g. it really bothers me that so many people on this list are satisfied with Smalltalk-80 (Yikes!) But that's another soapbox. This is why computing is not a real scientific field, but much more like a pop culture (and sometimes like psychopathic children tearing wings off flies). If parts of the pop culture get interested in bigger problems (and they are and are being forced by circumstances to) then we can and should help them invent rounder wheels. You are complaining about the irrationality of human beings. If they were rational, then we wouldn't need to worry about education, and there wouldn't have been a 3rd world in the 21st century. Most people's imaginations are so undeveloped as to be essentially non-existent. This is why we had to build more than a 1000 Altos, dozens of Ethernets and laser printers before anyone, let alone Xerox was even willing to concede that personal computing was a topic. As Butler Lampson as remarked "One of the things that made this easier than it could have been was that no one in the world was doing personal computing in the early 70s except for PARC. We had the entire field to ourselves, and thus could take our time to choose the riches paths we could imagine." What's needed for this effort more than any other thing are compelling examples that can be used as prototypes for many kinds of home grown content. Part of "compelling" is the sense that the local groups can really feel in control of their software experience. Not terribly un-rational actually. It would be more rational if they were willing to learn Smalltalk, but so what if they don't want to. The Internet is the real key here, and the web part has been terribly botched. But I think the good content is going to look more like Etoys than either Smalltalk or Python or Ruby, so who cares about which religon is used? Cheers, Alan At 09:03 AM 4/22/2006, Hilaire Fernandes wrote: >Really? Eventually children suffering from anemia will die. Those day, >each 5 second a kid (bellow 10) die because of mal-nutrition. Since the >begining of this thread more than 34000 kids die for such reason, I >can't agree the effect is the same. > >I just really feel unconfortable about plan, in the name of kids in >developing countries, related to spend resources just to re-develop >existing stuff. >You know that Smalltalk and its environment are far superior to Python, >so I cannot understand you stand "kid first" and at the same time your >position about spending resources re-developping a graphical environment >with an inferior vehicule. It is just non-sense. It will make more sense >to re-developped more advanced language&environment on top of >Smalltalk/Squeak. Was it not your initial plan? > >As said Garrison Keillor: >"I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it." > >Hilaire > >Alan Kay a écrit : > > We have television instead of anemia, but it has a similar effect ... > > > > Cheers, > > > > Alan > > > > ------------- > > > > At 07:06 AM 4/22/2006, Hilaire Fernandes wrote: > > > >> Alan Kay a écrit : > >> > Yes, if only the world -- especially computer people -- were even > >> > halfway rational and interesting in learning ... but this is one of the > >> > main goals of education (= enlightenment, etc.), and this is why global > >> > education for everyone has been my main interest over the years. > >> > > >> > As Seymour once said, "I wish the US was still a developing country!"). > >> > We could say that about Europe also.... > >> > >> Hum, not sure to understand. In developping country, one related problem > >> to education is to avoid children suffer from anemia, which make them > >> unable to concentrate on anything. > >> > >> Hilaire > > > > > > > > > > |
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In reply to this post by Alan Kay
> You've got it. The US thinks it is "there", and this is the most
> disastrous attitude to have, either at the level of a country (or a > programming language). Or, indeed, anyone who ever hopes to learn anything ever again. The only place we arrive and stop moving is the grave, after all. |
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In reply to this post by stéphane ducasse-2
> For the TV reference this may be indeed a problem. Now we also get
> students (19 or 20 years old) that are only consumers and do not know > how to take patience to do something, or even concentrate more than 2 > mins. May be this is related to TV. Not that I don't like the whole "crusty old men sitting around talking about how the world's gone to hell" paradigm but I do believe this is a situation that's getting better. And in a way that scares the big content providers of the 20th century. I believe the coming revolution may only be televised as an afterthought. But you'll be able to download the torrent as it happens. |
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In reply to this post by Daniel Vainsencher-3
> I had about 3 years of fun with Basic and about 500 pages of exercise
> booklets, and nothing more. I think two important elements to that > success were that the Commodore64 had zero extraneous interface, and > that the booklets started from explaining the keyboard. I face that one a lot. I learned from David Ahl's "BASIC Computer Games" books. All teletype style stuff, at first. 1. Type in listing printed in cramped dot-matrix replicated smudge. 2. Run. 3. Fix typos. 4. Repeat 2 & 3 as necessary. 5. Embellish with graphics, sounds, more gameplay. 6. Refactor 7. Repeat 5 & 6 while interested. Of course I didn't know I was "refactoring" at the time. Say what you want about BASIC, it was =powerful= motivation (at least to me) to find better ways of doing things. Fortunately or unfortunately, the base level systems are a lot more complex now. ===Blake=== |
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In reply to this post by Alan Kay
Ah yes, I forgot that small issue of most people never really learning
to read and like it. Sufficient "wiredness" to get started might become (more or less) universal on its own as the computers flood in. But books have been here forever, and learning by reading is far from a universal skill. I guess this affects the initial content drastically: need to have some content that can draw people in even if they can't read, and on the other hand get them used to reading in order to learn. So what content do you expect to have on the 100$ laptop when it is shipped, and how far do you think it will be able to take the other 85% (or even the next 20%, which would already be great)? Anyway, for anyone else that finds this fascinating, Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age (or - a Young Ladies Illustrated Primer)" is (IMHO) a very good sci fi story revolving around a Dynabook that happens to capture this stuff pretty well... I never caught on to that particular motivation for Nebraska, though I have thought that peer-to-peer mentoring should be an aspect of the solution. I gather this happens somewhat spontaneously in MMORPGs, so maybe the Croquet facilities will do the trick. Daniel Alan Kay wrote: > Hi Daniel -- > > At 10:02 AM 4/22/2006, Daniel Vainsencher wrote: >> Moving sideways in this discussion - as long as mentoring is more >> important than content ... > > I'd say that if you have good content, the gating factor for success > is definitely that quality of the mentoring for most children. > >> , the number of kids that can be "infected" at any given time is >> bounded by the number of people able to do the mentoring. I expect >> mentors are even rarer than computers where the 100$ laptop is headed. > > Yep, even in US, Europe, Japan, and generally worse in 3rd world. > > >> Haven't there been any serious attempts to make systems in which the >> content itself takes the user on a reasonably long and useful ride >> even with no mentoring? > > Yes, and it works for some children, especially the 5% who are wired > enough to "almost be there" and for those who have learned how to > learn via reading (I was one of those). > > A very large number of children don't read well enough or have enough > interest to follow directions. Most also have very few options when > they get stuck. For most children, mentoring of some kind (including > from the system if it can) is the bridge over the gaps. > > What Jerry Bruner called "scaffolding" is a little different from > child to child, but it is key. > > >> I had about 3 years of fun with Basic and about 500 pages of exercise >> booklets, and nothing more. I think two important elements to that >> success were that the Commodore64 had zero extraneous interface, and >> that the booklets started from explaining the keyboard. > > And, most likely, that you were in that 5%! Adele and I realized early > on that the real key was to find out what to do for the next 85%, and > this is where actual pedagogy and educational environments (and > mentoring) really matter. > > >> Why can't the booklet be part of the environment, and improved until >> mentors can be banned from the room with no/little ill results? > > Check out the idea of "Active Essays" that Ted Kaehler and I starting > doing about 12 years ago. These bridge some of the gap for readers. > But are not very useful for non-readers. > > The UI is part of the mentoring environment (this is why I got > interested in naive relatively easy to use and explorable UIs in the > 70s -- they were initially for children). > > If you don't have much of an AI behind the scenes, then a really great > UNDO makes a huge difference. I think that was one of the main PARC > contributions to UIs. (Squeak does not have a great UNDO ...). > > But, aside from having huge mechanisms that can anticipate and deal > with user errors in a graceful way (c.f. Anderson's work at CMU with > tutors of various kinds), not much general mechanism exists. I have > thought several times about getting Anderson to do a massively gentle > tutor for just the first 30 minutes of the Etoys experience (and I > still think this would be a good idea for the $100 laptop). > > Among other things, the Nebraska facilities in Squeak Etoys (and the > more comprehensive collab facilities in Croquet) are there partly for > the purpose of allowing children who have some experience somewhere in > the world to help children with less experience in other parts of the > world. In McLuhan's global village, this is the analogy to the one > room schoolhouse. Both Seymour and we have experimented with this over > the years and are convinced that it is a part of the solution of the > puzzle. > > Cheers, > > Alan > > >> Daniel >> >> Alan Kay wrote: >>> I agree that content is really important, and even more so is >>> mentoring. The language is less so providing it doesn't develop >>> limited ideas (like BASIC did). >> > > > |
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In reply to this post by Alan Kay
> This is why computing is not a real scientific field, but much more like a
> pop culture (and sometimes like psychopathic children tearing wings off > flies). Hey! No need to drag C++ into this! ;-) |
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In reply to this post by Alan Kay
Alan Kay a écrit :
> Hi -- > > I would gently suggest you are missing the points here. I would rather say we have a different perception on what can be the priority for kids given their reality of life. Even if it can be considered short sight, it can be, in some situation, more valuable to be practical. Squeak/Smalltalk is from my own experience in development language (from c++ to Java and throught Python) the best plateform around there to write high level contents for education. You did an extraordinary work developping Squeak, but it is sad you stopped at Etoys, because for me Etoys is only the glue for differents object component within Squeak. Now, with what you did in Squeak/Etoys, more high level content can be developped and hooked together in Squeak, for example as dynamic geometry (http://www.univ-savoie.fr/Portail/Groupes/fernandes/demos/4-mosaique/index.html) This is a direction I found interesting intellectually and also very effective to bring a good learning environment for kids. Hilaire |
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